No big sales in China, it seems, and no big surprise given the low initial numbers we saw, and the prevalence -- and huge pre-existing install base -- of black and gray-market iPhones (with wifi!) smuggled into the country. And if that sounds apologist'ic, yeah, sorry. But iLounge is reporting:

Taobao.com, the largest Chinese e-commerce web site reports that it has sold only two 8GB iPhones and three 16GB iPhones since it began selling them on Nov 22nd.

So, sky fallen for the iPhone in China? Still falling? No one cares because they all have unlocked iPhones anyway?

The iPhone finally went on sale in China last week, and according to Business Week, only 5000 appear to have been sold.

Scratch that. Do over. An overly expensive, Wi-Fi crippled version of the iPhone eventually went on sale in China, where over 2 million cheaper, unlocked, gray-market iPhones with functioning Wi-Fi have already been sold over the last couple years, and weren't found to be terribly competitive.

Either way, China remains a billion-user market, and Apple needed to get a foot in the door. Sure, they likely wanted a much bigger initial foot, but when the next version of China Unicom's iPhone, with Wi-Fi (and hopefully more competitive rates) becomes available, maybe... they'll see some slow, steady growth in that general direction?

[Thanks Icebike for the tip!]